Iridium Communications announced that its Iridium Certus® 100 “midband” service is commercially available for maritime, land mobile, IoT, aviation and government customers. Iridium Certus 100 provides a unique blend of capabilities for satellite connectivity, enabling small, low-profile antennas and battery-powered devices designed for maximum mobility, but with IP data speeds that efficiently support sending important pictures, emails and other vital information from remote places.
Iridium Certus 100 debuts with several new Iridium Connected® partner products and is designed to address market demand for new satcom solutions requiring small form factor and battery or line-powered mobile equipment, capable of two-way IP data and high-quality voice services. No other satellite operator can provide this range of capabilities over the whole planet, enabling new classes of connected products.
To date, Iridium has already certified over a dozen new partner-built products that will provide weather-resilient connections up to 88 Kbps, with more in development. Iridium Certus 100 products are well suited for autonomous vehicles like unmanned autonomous vehicles (UAVs), unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs) and unmanned surface vehicles (USVs), remote monitoring of facilities or equipment, and even new personal communications devices that include messaging, photos and low-resolution video. The small, handheld portability of the new equipment means many devices can be battery powered or integrated as an onboard communications system for vessels, aircraft and connected vehicles.
“Our new Iridium Certus 100 midband service is designed for applications that are agile, remote, and need more throughput than our traditional narrowband offerings, but don’t demand the speeds or larger, heavier antennas used in our popular Iridium Certus broadband solutions,” said Iridium CEO Matt Desch. “The impressive number of new products coming to market from our partners tells us that we’re addressing an important new capability that has never been addressed by satellite operators before.”
Among the first products available are the SkyLink by Blue Sky Network and LT-4100 by Lars Thrane. SkyLink is a dual-mode data management solution for land, air, sea, and IoT applications, which has already been chosen for integration into UAV and USV systems. Available in each of the four mentioned vertical configurations, SkyLink is an adaptive solution with efficient size, weight and power features, making it ideal for mid-sized vessels, vehicles, remote monitoring stations, industrial IoT, unmanned systems, and government and military aviation.
The LT-4100 by Lars Thrane has been designed for the professional mariner, particularly for deep sea fishing and workboats. However, it also presents an attractive choice for the leisure market with IP data capabilities supporting messaging and email. The terminal has been engineered to withstand the demanding and rough environment at sea and comes standard with two high-quality voice lines.
Some of the additional solutions approaching commercial availability or in beta testing include the Flylogix UAV system, Ground Control’s RockRemote, the McQ CONNECT™ and the NAL Research Quicksilver (QS-100).
The Flylogix UAV system is used for routine offshore emissions monitoring and infrastructure inspection. This system is serving multiple territories around the world and is now capable of real-time data delivery to customers as well as its existing command and control.
The RockREMOTE from Ground Control is an IP-based, dual-mode LTE-Satellite communications solution designed for industrial IoT applications, ideal for remote sites operated by utilities, renewables, oil and gas businesses. The RockREMOTE offers companies the ability to better manage their off-the-grid assets with a full Linux OS and integrated storage allowing for edge computing that brings added intelligence, security and cost-effectiveness to customer applications.
The McQ CONNECT is a small satcom modem designed for government applications that can send and receive information in real-time over Internet Protocol (IP) networks. It can augment existing McQ devices such as the McQ Owl, enabling it to transmit video and high-quality photos, or the McQ CONNECT can serve as an integrated communications device for mobile assets. Data is transported in real-time through a secure Cloud network enabling command and control of remote assets globally.
The NAL Research QUICKSILVER (QS-100) has been designed for diverse and demanding government missions as well as commercial applications. It is built for both standalone use and embedded platform integration, enabling reliable communications in the toughest environments from anywhere in the world. Quicksilver’s midband speeds and compact size make it the ideal choice for staying connected. From data links and command and control (C2) of unmanned systems to diagnostic monitoring applications, Quicksilver delivers your data when you need it, where you need it.
Iridium Certus 100 midband speeds can support email, messaging applications like WhatsApp, media sharing, telemetry reporting, file transfer, internet/VPN access and up to two simultaneous high-quality voice calls. When combined with the latest in Iridium partner data compression technologies, Iridium Certus 100 also supports low-resolution video transmission for surveillance and monitoring applications.
Iridium Certus is the world’s most advanced L-band satellite service platform, offering the flexibility to scale device speeds, sizes and power requirements both up and down based on the needs of the end-user. Delivered over the recently upgraded Iridium® satellite constellation, the Iridium Certus service goes beyond serving solely as a connectivity solution. It provides a platform for the company’s partners to develop specialized broadband, midband and narrowband applications to connect people and assets, made possible by Iridium’s unique crosslinked L-band network.
